Out to Lunge

By MARY ANN CASTRONOVO FUSCO

Published: July 30, 2000

SOUTH ORANGE—
SLASH and burn, that's Nicole Mustilli's style. It has been since her days at Columbia High School in Maplewood.

Pouncing like a tiger. Thrusting.

But these days, the stakes are higher for the 22-year-old Air Force second lieutenant, who with each touch lets out a yell, a reverberating screech -- as much an emotional release as a tactic of intimidation.

At the World Championship of Fencing in Budapest from June 30 to July 2, Ms. Mustilli and her teammates, Chris Becker and Mariel Zagunis of Portland, Ore., and Sada Jacobson of Atlanta, defeated the top-seeded Italian squad to take first place. Never before had an American fencing team captured a gold medal.

In a videotape of the fiery young woman with a cover girl smile, more than her deftness with a saber is on display. Her feet are clad in running shoes instead of the traditional fencer's shoe; she purposefully strides back to her starting position after each point, curly pigtails bouncing and poking out of the back of her mask.

As the American flag was raised above those of Italy and third-place France, the soft-spoken Ms. Mustilli recalled, ''All I kept saying was 'Oh my gosh, it's going to be our flag. It's going to be our national anthem. We're not going have to sit through some other national anthem we don't know. It's going be ours, ours!' I was in such shock. It doesn't feel at that moment as wonderful as you think it would feel because you're numb, just totally numb, like in a dream.''

As for the United States Fencing Association, it hopes to make these kinds of conquests with the saber more of a reality and less of a dream. ''The participation of women in what was until recently considered only a sport for men has developed significantly in the past several years,'' the association says, ''and is proposed to be included in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.''

At 5 feet 4 and 135 pounds, Ms. Mustilli is about average size for a fencer. To give herself a mental edge, she practices visualization exercises in which she envisions herself defeating her opponent and routinely repeats such affirmations as, ''I'm the best; I enjoy winning; I'm ambitious and self-assured.''

''Psychology is huge,'' she said. ''Anyone can beat anyone on any day. I think that's what's pretty neat about the sport. All the things that you have to hold inside on a normal basis get to come out on the strip,'' the four-foot-wide surface on which the sport is played out.

''She has a good spirit for fencing,'' said Vladimir Lilov of the Lilov Fencing Academy in Montclair, who has been coaching Ms. Mustilli since 1992. ''She has the potential to go to the Olympic Games'' -- even though for now women's saber isn't an Olympic event.

Considered a more aggressive, hence ''masculine,'' weapon than foil or epee, saber ''comes from your cavalry, where you can only hit the person from the waist up,'' explained Ms. Mustilli's father, Frank Mustilli, president of Allegiance Community Bank in South Orange.

The combative action and lively pace of saber -- in which the target is the body above the hips, including arms and head -- attracted Ms. Mustilli when she began entering national competitions. Previously she had fenced foil -- using a more flexible blade and with the torso only as target -- at Columbia , where she was captain of the fencing team in her senior year. At the University of Notre Dame, stiff foil competition led her to switch to epee -- using a stiffer blade and with the whole body as fair game -- and she was named All-American in her junior and senior years and captain of the university's epee team in 1999.

''Her portfolio is quite extensive,'' her father said. ''She's able to reach out and take a foil or epee move and turn it into a saber move. That plus her passion and fire make her an opponent you definitely have to contend with.''

Although Mr. Mustilli was North Atlantic fencing champion in his junior and senior years at Montclair State College and had coached the Caldwell College fencing team, the sport was rarely discussed when she was growing up, recalled his daughter. Her own interest in fencing wasn't piqued until an eighth-grade assignment required her to make a video. The fencing equipment in her family's garage was within easy camera range, and that is when she got the idea that fencing might be a good sport for her to try in high school.

''I don't know what really attracted me to it,'' she said. ''But I know what made me stay with it: After the first week of practice I was beating the starters.''

Her involvement in the sport coaxed her father out of fencing retirement, and he became a volunteer coach at Columbia High, which has since become a fencing powerhouse in the state, with an 85-7 record over the last seven years. Ms. Mustilli's sister, Marisa, now a student at St. John's University in New York, also took to the fencing strip. Last year her collegiate record was 52-1.

''In the under-20s, my sister and I pretty much dominated the national scene because there weren't that many women saberists,'' said Nicole.